


Life as we knew it

by grislupis



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Being Lost, Deeply Emotional Romance, Eventual Sex, Eventual Smut, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Getting over lost love ones, Jealousy, Loneliness, Loss of Virginity, Quantum Mechanics, Science Experiments, Technology, Time Travel, emotional distress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-23 01:09:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 20,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6099919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grislupis/pseuds/grislupis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The year is 2056, the great war is holding itself on the brink, and not a single person here realizes that they are about to set in motion an insane chain of events that sends one of the greatest mad scientists of their time deep into the future. Will Arthur Maxson finally get over the loss of Sara Lyons when he meets up with the eccentric scientist? Or is she really mad after all?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Just another day on the job

My name is Lorane Giessler, and I work as a scientist at one of the world's most renown facilities in Helion collider technology in Colorado. What is Helion collider technology? Well that's simple it's a way to make teleportation a safe and viable way for transit all over the world, and someday soon it will become a reality. I have been a test scientist for fifteen years now, and my prize handheld teleportation device is finally ready for its first use. We transferred to the Boston area to work with the U.S. Army on this project and get a much-needed injection of government money.  
"Oh, this is so exciting Dr. Turnmikel. I can't wait to go from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles in just a few microseconds!"  
"Easy now Dr. Giessler, just because it's finally ready doesn't mean that you'll be all that way in one shot. Besides, we have been having issues with your designs on the fusion type power source for the device. It's just not stable enough yet for that much energy to travel through those couplings."  
"This is true, but I have faith!" I said smiling and holding my one index finger high in the air as we rounded the corner into the testing chamber.   
"You're positively insane; you know that right?!" Dr. Turnmikel said turning to me in the rudest tone. The other scientists looked on as if a brawl were to ensue at any moment.  
"Yes, I'm certifiable at this point but this is my life's work, and if it weren't for me none of you would even be here." I snapped him with my harsh truth of words. It was true after all, I started this whole insane project inside of the confines of my single car garage and after a ton of involvement by the U.S. government here I am.   
"We are standing in the best facility in the eastern United States, the Common Wealth Institute of Technology. We are about to embark on an incredible journey into the future of technology, and all you want to do is spar with me? You, sir, are an imbecile." I said as I started the inspection on a T-45b power armor suit given to us by the U.S. Army for testing with my new Helion gun. They wanted to make sure it would be able to withstand the forces that might be present inside of a small wormhole that projected an individual from place to another and the gravitational forces as well. The Army commissioned me as a Captain for the remainder of my role as a lead scientist and project tester. As per standard rules and regulations, I wore my standard U.S. Army issues Colt .45 sidearm on my army uniform and got inside the armor.  
"Please be careful this time around Lorane. I don't want to have to explain how you destroyed several hundreds of thousands of dollars of government equipment in one of your reckless experiments."  
"Don't worry so much Dr. Turmikel. It'll make all that lovely black hair of your turn white. I'll be fine, this equipment will be fine, and I'll be out and back again before you know it. Promise."  
Dr. Turnmikel stepped outside of the testing area as I checked my systems.  
"All systems are green, and everything looks like it's ready to go ma'am." I looked down at my personal data module mounted on the outside forearm of the armor. I wore two huge liquid fuel tanks on the back of the armor to boost the fusion system that was integrated into the armor for the ride.  
Helion system: ready, all system power safe functions active. Geosynchronous positioning satellite signals locked on and ready. Fusion tanks and liquid fuel mixtures all green and the internal mixing sequences have started. I pulled the cables from the back of the rifle and attached them to their points on the arm of the armor, for the system power feed.  
"Okay, everyone roll on one, roll on two," I said as I flipped the toggle switches up on the gun and it charged the air around me with a crackling as the tesla coils charged and lightning bolts licked the walls around me.  
Dr. Turnmikel secured the blast doors, and the count-down started on the large clock on the wall in front of me. I had waited for this moment for five years and after several dismal failures and severe injury to myself, it was time. This was now or never! I was incredibly nervous inside this power suit the Army insisted that I use this time. I watched my fellow scientists on the other side of the safety glass as they worked the monitors and recorded this event. It would prove to be both insane and worth our while.   
As the timer ran down slowly, I began sweating and knew if something went wrong this time I would die for certain.   
Maybe that's the way they insisted I wear this damn thing.   
"What would ten thousand gigawatts of electricity do to the human body anyways right? There's not a big risk here, really, everything would explode on the molecular a level at the speed of light, and there would be absolutely no pain. Nobody would have an inkling of what happened and the government would blame it on Russia." I thought about that conversation I had with my fellow scientific community last night and the looks on their faces would never leave me after that statement rolled out of my mouth as if it were a fact of life. They were both appalled and horrified at my gross negligence for my life at the sound of my experimenting with my very dangerous work. I started laughing, and that didn't help matters one bit, they just sat there and watched me act like the lunatic I was. But now it's showed, and they didn't like that one bit, no matter, they had no control, I did.  
I stood there and admired the gun one last time before the test. It was a beautiful white rifle about five long, and it looked like a prototype laser rifle with all the added Tesla coils and different colors floating around it. The timer ticked down to twenty seconds. The dissipation fields around me started to flow like water and wrapped me like a magnetic field wrapped the earth's atmosphere. The snapping of the coils was now confined to me and the rifle as it no longer had the ability to lick the walls of the test chamber.  
A voice on the loudspeaker started as the ten seconds were closing in, this was going to be the ride of my life, and I will get to be the first person on the planet to see the quantum dimension.  
"Ten-Nine-Eight-Seven-Six-Five-"  
I shifted as the gun's indicator lights showed all green up the stock of the gun and my armor was synced to it.  
"Four!-Three!"  
I stood with the weapon pointed at the floor and took in a deep breath.  
"Two!-One!"  
I fired the weapon, and there was a massive explosion of light around me as I vanished from the testing chamber. I was traveling at just below the speed of light, and I was outside briefly as I felt the forces of the quantum world squeeze me inside this tin can. I could hear the cries of the scientists and the sounds of explosions and fire. If there had been an accident in the lab at that point, there would have been no way for me to do anything about it. I didn't know where I was or what was happening at this point. I was traveling forward in time the day turning to night faster and faster.  
Then I saw it! A nuclear explosion is wiping out the entire city! It hit me, and I was hurled into another dimension, and everything turned black!   
I snapped back into the lab flying backward, end over end and slammed into the blast doors with horrific force, enough to knock one of the doors off the hinges and leave it on the floor of the hallway. The fuel for the weapon had been expelled and I lay on the shattered door in a dazed state. I sat up and the gun magnetized to the chest plate of the armor with a nasty hissing sound.   
"Well, I guess this is a good place as any to store that for now," I said to myself as I looked around the run down facility. Alarms were sounding, and lights are flashing, but it looked like nobody had been here for ages. I slowly staggered to my feet and clamored against the wall just able to stand.   
"Oh my god! What the hell happened here?! Did I do all this?!" I started to walk into the facility looking at everything how it had been twisted and bent by the nuclear war. Some of the systems had been fired on the armor by the electromagnetic field from the blast I had experience outside, but everything on the personal data module seemed intact. I moved through all the data in the system and made my way to the GPS clock. What I saw there almost made me sick enough to puke.  
"The date is 2287, October 23. The time is 1147. Location Commonwealth Institute of Technology Lab Four."   
I slapped myself and looked at it again.  
"No way! I traveled forward in time! Over two hundred years! What I saw happening outside was the future and is now the past?! Oh, my god! Everyone is dead! I'm stuck here, and I have no idea how I got here or how to get back!! No this can't be happening!"   
I pulled the helmet off and ran my hand over my head and across my face. Just then I heard voices down the hall and the sounds of steel on steel footsteps. I rushed in a panic and tried to hide, but a voice snapped at my back as I ran down the hallway.  
"Stop! Stop right there!" It was a man's voice, and as I looked over my shoulder, I could see him chasing me in a suit of power armor but not like the one the Army gave me. I rounded the corner to what should have been the admin offices, and the hallway had collapsed, and it was a dead end. I put the helmet back on and turned around to face my doom.  
The man rounded the corner with his laser rifle pointed at me shouting.  
"Put your hands up where I can see them! Do it now!" A small woman ran up next to him and looked me over.   
"Wow! I have never seen armor like that before. It's prewar and that gun. Is that?" She said reaching for it and I blocked her hand.  
"Don't touch that! It's dangerous!" She snapped back, and the man shoved me against the wall.  
"Don't do that again. You hear me?" He growled at me angrily as she approached again. Looking carefully at my gear and my name plate on my armor read Dr. Lorane Giessler, Lead Project Scientist- the rest had been burned off by my rocky re-entry to this dimension.  
"Danse wait!" She shouted with joy. I held the backs of my hands against the wall as he lowered his weapon and looked at her.  
"Wait?! What?" He asked as Scribe Haylen examined me again.  
"Are you?- Are you Dr. Geissler? The real Dr. Giessler that invented fusion energy and fusion weaponry?" Haylen asked.  
"Yes, ma'am. I was under contract with the U. S. Army. Who are you guys?"  
"We are members of the Brotherhood of Steel. I'm Paladin Danse, and this is Scribe Haylen."  
"Is the U.S. Army still around? What happened and better yet why are you here?"  
Haylen sighed and looked at Danse.  
"You better come with us, there is much you need to learn and a lot more we need to discuss." Paladin Danse said as he held his hand out and I slowly placed mine in his. This was going to be an interesting journey to a new world that had possibly been transformed by the very technology I had invented.


	2. Responsibility for this future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A first mission to help the Brotherhood and the first encounter with Nora, the vault's sole survivor.

As we started to walk out of the facility, I had them stop. I needed to collect so things from my office, and so I left them standing in the lobby. Haylen looked up at Danse as he watched me walk away pushing back on the gun that was still attached to my armor chest plate.  
"What are you thinking here?" She was searching his face for an expression.  
"I don't know, but that explosion we heard was definitely her doing. I don't think she had been trapped in that lab like you thought though I think that she was in that lab a long time ago, and now she's here due to some of the other experiments that were going on at the time she performed her experiment." He said with a worried look on his face.  
"If what I have read about her is true, the Brotherhood just found the jewel of the scientific community before the war. I wonder how she feels about what's happened here. I hope she doesn't take all that talk about her in the old papers personal and oh-no! What if she freaks out when she sees what it's like outside?!" Haylen put her hands on the sides of her face and looked panicked for a minute or two.  
"We'll cross that bridge when we get there. Don't jump to conclusions just yet." He murmured as they heard my steel feet clank down the hall towards them. I popped out from behind the corner carrying a messenger bag filled with all sorts of personal effects and technology. I was struggling with the gun on my chest when I came to a stop where my new friends stood.  
"Uh--um--Excuse me Paladin Danse? Can you please help me get this damn thing off of here?" I said pointing to the gun and dropping my bag on the floor next to Haylen.  
"Sure." He grabbed the stock and barrel as I put my hands on the backside and pushed as he pulled. When it broke free, I fell into him, and the armor slamming together made a loud bang sound that echoed through the facility. I shut the weapon down as Haylen looked on, I flipped all the toggle switches down and closed the covers. I turned to my MDC (mobile data computer) that rode on my forearm, sort of like a pip-boy but like a mobile server mainframe. I started flipping through different screens, looking at data and other readouts when I noticed that Haylen was completely fascinated by the device. I darkened the screen and looked at her smiling.  
"You really like this thing don't you?" I asked her as I grabbed my bag and tossed the strap over my shoulder. The hoses from the rifle were a little cumbersome, but I couldn't leave it here. I held the rifle down to my side as I actually couldn't let go of it due to the attchments.  
"I love tech, I have never seen anything like what you have, and I'm glad that we met. Maybe you can teach me some stuff, and I can exchange information with you about what you've missed." She started to reach towards me and then pulled back.  
"Thank you, Paladin. I guess there's nothing left here for me. I will go with you and help you as best I can." He nodded to me and we started to the exit door. He turned his face back before opening it.  
"I just want to let you know now. The world outside is a lot different than the one you remember. I just didn't want it to shock you that much."  
"Thanks. I appreciate your thoughtfulness towards me, that's a quality that most didn't even have when everything was normal." He smiled and nodded as he pushed the door open and the bright sunlight rushed in and I saw what my designs had enabled the human race to do to themselves for the first time. I was shocked by the sight of it. Everything was dead, even things that weren't alive were dead. Fusion detonation cores coupled with hydrogen bombs had a way of doing that. I walked slowly with them, looking around at this alien place I once called home and a newspaper flapped up against my left foot. I reached down and picked it up, reading the date October 23, 2077. I stuffed it in my shack for later reference, and we made our way over to the broken down police station over in Cambridge.   
It was so quiet you could have heard the very thoughts of the dead people that lay strewn across the streets from long ago. We came inside, and I was met by a particularly mean looking man that looked like he had been through hell with a bitter chip on his shoulder. Haylen and Danse walked over to him, and they all walked into another room to chat. I set my stuff down and started to examine my special weapon. I guess I shouldn't call it a weapon, it was never meant to be that, my handheld particle collider it was my pride and joy of my career. Not that it mattered anymore, though. I started unlocking the hoses and the hissing noises from the pressure tanks startled my company. They rushed into the room looking at me like I had just defecated on their beds. I laid the collider down gently on the counter top and looked over at them. I took my helmet off and set it down next to the rifle. They watched me like I was a ghost from Christmas past drifting around the room with some dismal message. I smiled and laughed to myself.  
"Okay, why are you all looking at me like that?!" I leaned up against the counter top and stood crossing my arms.  
"Holy shit. It really is you. I--I mean you really are who you say you are. I thought you were just pulling my leg, but that thing right there says it all." Haylen skipped over to me and put an old newspaper on my face. I focused on the picture on the front cover; it was me back when I showed off my collider to the public about five days before the test. The newspaper read:  
'October 29, 2056, Lead Project Scientist Doctor Lorane Geissler, of the U.S. Army Corps. of Engineers, will test her newest design for the handheld particle collider code named Helion Four. Her other remarkable designs include the first ever self-powered combat armor, the T-41c, new types of fusion cores for the car and home use and her most pivotal accomplishment to date, the invention of the first atomic magnetron laser focusing fusion powered rifle, nicknamed by the Army as the Laser Rifle. The test of Helion Four, should it be successful, will be the next step for humanity to travel effortlessly for thousands of miles in only microseconds.'  
The article went on and on about the facility and other experiments from there, but I handed it back to Haylen. I met her eyes, and she was just completely infused with fantasy. I was some sort of hero to her, and I didn't like that word or what it stood for, 'hero.' That wasn't me; I was a scientist that did a job, and now what I had originally designed this stuff for was out the window. I knew what that damn Dr. Turnmikel had said about me time and time again to people in the lab, that I was mad and this thing was going to kill me. Lorane Geissler the famous mad scientist of the U.S. Army.   
I pulled out the paper that had made its way to my foot during our little trek to the police station and they watched my face twist with horror as I read the past as if it were something, truly breaking news. The invasion of Anchorage Alaska, the civil unrest of the citizens in the states and then an article pointed directly at me. I was said to have travelled into the future and started this war due to the visions of madness that 'controlled' these fantastic ideas that I had and created the end of the world single handedly.  
I slowly dropped the paper to the floor and turned away from them to wipe my eyes. I was upset at what they said about me in that rag of a paper but half of that was true, I had travelled into the future but I had no hand in any of this. Haylen and Danse looked at each other and Danse put his hand on my shoulder as I squeezed my face.   
"Are you going to be okay?" He asked with much concern.  
"Yeah, I'll make it, there doesn't seem to be any other way. I'm here now and that's what we deal with. The today's and tomorrow's not the past, a past where I have been coined a monster and the responsibility of all of this thrown on my shoulders. Damn them! I don't care what they have said about me, it's not true, and I'll prove it through my works with the Brotherhood."  
"So now what?" I said looking at all of them with wet eyes that shimmered with angst about how my name was run through the mud in the past.  
"Well, we need some help, and we were hoping that you could help us out here. I know it's a lot to ask, but you help us, and we'll help you. But first you and I need to talk."  
"Okay. Let's get it over with." I said following him into an old office, and he closed the door behind us. Rhys and Haylen stood looking at the newspaper and the Helion Four. She knew not to touch it as it was an unstable technology but Rhys had to bat her hand away.  
"Don't touch that thing. Look where she ended up trying to use it. You to end up somewhere else like that?" Rhys scorned her a little.  
"No, not really. I just want to see it a little closer. I have never met anyone from the war. I have seen ghouls, but someone like her that's different. I wonder what Elder Maxson's going to do when the Prydwen arrives, and he finds out she's here with us?"  
"I don't know, but I think that she's some sort of godsend. I just hope that I'm right about that."  
Danse and I exited the office as Rhys and Haylen broke off their conversation about me. Danse smiled at them and made the announcement. He decided to take me under his wing and made me an initiate of the Brotherhood. Rhys didn't like that idea but after a lengthy discussion with his teammates they agreed that it was for the best.   
Rhys stood nearly up against me and got in my face.   
"You don't look much like a soldier. I hope you just get what you're after and get the hell out of here."  
"You have a problem with me Rhys why don't you just says what's exactly on your mind so we can get this shit over with. I'm not starting a pissing match with you but if you start your shit with me, little man, I promise I'll knock you down a peg or two."  
He pressed his chest up against my armor and sneered at me.  
"Why don't you get down off your high horse Doctor and we'll take this outside."  
"Not a problem pal."  
I exited my armor and Rhys tried to take a pot shot at me, as he missed I nailed him in the stomach and dropped him to the floor. Danse got between him and me, pushing me back towards the wall as Haylen helped him to his feet.  
"Knock it off. I thought I made it clear not to be trouble." Danse grabbed my chin and looked right into my eyes; he wasn't pleased with my little scuffle.  
"I'm sorry, but I'm not going to lay down and let anyone treat me like that. I know who I am, and I'm not about to let that guy push me around."  
"I understand. I'm sorry about his behavior. Please try and behave yourself, I know it's hard to swallow the future that you have been thrown into, but I need your help. I know you're a good person, and I want you to be part of our team."  
I looked into him and saw he was telling me the truth. I huffed gently and nodded.  
"Okay. I'm sorry about that. I didn't mean to react that way to him, he reminded me of another person that tried his hardest to steal my work, and I hated that man. I'm sorry Rhys."  
Danse released me and Rhys held his hand out to me. We shook hands, and he smiled slightly at me as he walked away. I stepped back into my armor, and we went on our first mission together to get their communications working again. Upon our return, a female vault dweller was fighting off some ghouls that were attacking the police station. We helped fight them off, and everyone got inside to safety. The woman looked at us, and I just stood there watching her.  
"The communications tower is working now. I hope you people can get a communiqué out to your superiors."  
"We will, thank you very much. I hope we get to work together again soon Lorane." Paladin Danse handed me a laser rifle nicknamed 'Righteous Authority' for my working with him, and I was beyond pleased to accept an updated weapon that I had originally designed. I reattached Helion Four to my armor and carried it off the counter without power. I wrapped the laser rifle carefully and placed it in the bag before my departure.  
"Same here folks. I will run the missions for you guys, and I'll return before too long. I promise results, not disappointments." I walked out of the room and past the other woman who just stared at me from underneath her T-45 armor. I tipped my helmet to her and vanished out into the wastes.  
Nora Nolan, the sole survivor, had heard the military distress call, and now she would also help the Brotherhood, but her involvement would later prove to be a huge pain in my ass. She knew exactly who I was, and that was going to be a problem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone likes this and please leave kudos if you do. Thanks!


	3. Work? What the hell is that?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Prydwen arrives and the scientist has some excellent experiments completed, but will Nora get in the way of progress? Let's see how eccentric Lorane really is.

It had been several weeks now that I started working with the Brotherhood without any issues when that airship of theirs showed up in the sky that afternoon. I had moved into Sanctuary Hills, the first house on the right, and set up my lab there in an attempt to work on getting back to the past. That notion of returning didn't make me very happy; there was nothing there for me in the past, and I was starting to like it here. Nora had been cold and shitty to me, but she'll come around, hopefully, and I have been doing a lot of work her lately. We didn't get along very well, but it was enough that we could have a conversation without cursing at each other.   
My lab had it very own melody of bubbling from my chemistry center, reloading machines working and vibrating on their workbenches, and the sounds of electrical hums from the main frames I had moved into the lab from several other places around the commonwealth. I did dangerous work here and it was my goal to make it a safe place to visit if people wished to do so. For as busy as it was the place was always spotless and I enjoyed bragging about to Haylen when she would come by, but this time it was a horrible mess.  
I was listening to music in the main area of the lab when there was a knock on my door. It was Haylen, a true friend to me and I had been waiting for her to come and visit.   
"Veronica! Oh come in, come in!" Stood up from the microscope and nearly tripped over some of the experimental fusion cells that littered the floor around my desk. She smiled widely, and we hugged for the first time in several days.   
"What are you doing here? And why are there a ton of fusion cells on the ground in different colors?" She said stepping carefully around all the tech over to a chair next to the desk. I popped a stick gum in my mouth and gave her a piece as I tapped my nails on the desktop.   
"Well," I said thoughtfully as I scratched my head and stretched my back.   
"I have been working on these fusion cells for different purposes. I made the green ones for a conversion pack for my armor, but that failed. They work well to cook food on, though. The purple ones are overcharged by fifty percent and the red ones by seventy percent."  
"The black one?" She pointed to it as it sat on my desk. I smiled devilishly at it and took in into my hand. It was warm to the touch, and if you held it tightly, you could feel it's energy spinning inside the canister.   
"This right here will create a blast leveling everything very effectively within five nautical miles of its radius. Used in a laser rifle, it has the equivalent of a five hundred ton hydrogen bomb and it explodes at an altitude of eighty-five feet. This is meant to be shot up into the air above the enemy and bleve out above and around them. I made this as a one shot kill for any behemoth. The only problem is you have to fire it from the air for optimum dispersal, and it's just a one-shot deal." I twisted it around in my fingers and set it back down on the desk carefully. Veronica's eyes never left the black fusion cell as it sat there waiting for its initial test.  
I was certain that the Brotherhood was going to be my next place to call home and I didn't want to jeopardize anything with them even if it wasn't true what had been said about me. I wanted her to watch me test some of this shit and I had an ace up my sleeve in the form of a new type of mini-nuke. I stood up from the desk and walked into my ordinance room as I called it, funny thing I put a sign that said 'blast radius incursion zone' on the door. I slapped it and laughed as I walked inside. Haylen slowly followed me as I searched for the fat man and its special shell. The look on her face was twisted between awe and terrified. I looked at her with a tilted smile and lifted the fat man into my shoulder with a thumbs up.  
"What are you going to do with that?" She started to back up towards the exit.  
I looked like a little devil and tossed her the mini-nuke as she almost fumbled it with her butterfingers.  
"We are going to test this thing out in a place where it can't cause any trouble but a whole lot of fun!"  
We left the lab and made our way over past the vault. I found a nice spot overlooking an river bed to launch it out into. I should have probably worn my power armor for this test but I didn't add into the equation the extra propellant for the new shell into the blast radius calculations. OOpss! I loaded the shell into the fat man and Haylen got behind some cover, she was the smart one in this instance. I looked over my shoulder at her and nodded.  
"Okay! Here we go!" I launched that thing and it blasted away from me at a high velocity that I wasn't actually expecting. It had fung into a higher than normal flight pattern when I realized there was a major flaw, it was going to explode in the air and the blast as going to hit me. I dropped the fat man launcher and dropped to the ground with my hands over my head and as I hit the dirt the thing blew up. The hot shock wave nailed me as I attempted to protect my face from it and I was shoved backwards and cart-wheeled ass over tea kettle about twenty feet down the embankment behind us.   
I looked back to where I was and I saw a huge blast cloud rise up and the secondary explosion ripped the trees out of the ground and they stuck in the ground all around me. I laid there and watched all the debris floating in the air as it slowly came back to earth. I coughed a little when Haylen ran out of nowhere and slid down to my side from a run.  
"Oh my god!! Are you okay?!" She was wiping the dirt off of my face and I slowly sat up.  
"Yep. I'm fine and that test was certainly a success but what a cost. I guess I made a slight mistake with the detonator on that one. Oh well, are you okay?" I asked as I shrugged at my last statement about the blast.  
"I'm fine. That was terrific! What else do you have to test?" I started laughed and rolling around on the ground when I realized I shouldn't be doing that. I sat up again and looked at my dirty clothes.  
"Well, first we need to deco ourselves and then we can play with some of the new fusion cells." We stood up and I walked over and picked up the fat man launcher off the ground when Danse came running up to us.  
"What the?!"  
We stood there smiling at him like two little kids that just got in big trouble when he started laughing at us.  
"Another experiment huh Lorane?"  
"Yes that's right and Haylen got to witness it this time." We all left that site and returned to the lab for decon. Haylen went first and Danse returned to Nora to help her with throwing grenades farther over at the police station. He turned to me before I went into the lab.  
"Come up to the Prydwen with us later. Elder Maxson wants to meet you."  
"Okay Danse, I will."  
That was a successful day and just in time to go meet the Elder.  
"Wow! That was so cool. Come to the Prydwen with us, Elder Maxson wants to meet you, and everyone else would be so happy to see a dire in the wool scientist!" Her enthusiasm was overpowering me, and I just started laughing.  
"I doubt that I will be a huge hit for your people, but I'll try. I'm not very pretty, and I'm sure as hell not popular. Not in a good way that is. I guess I'll come up there with ya and do a meet and greet if you think I should. Danse had asked me to come along so I guess I will." I said smiling and running me finger along the leading edge of the desk.  
"Oh, that's great, we are going to the Prydwen later this afternoon for the Elder's address."  
"Oh, I see." I nodded my head and looked up at her as the song changed on the player.  
"What is that music?" Veronica asked pointing over to the player in the corner.  
"This is called rock and roll. I had a massive collection back in my office; that's what I grabbed mostly when we left there. I love music since I spend all of my time alone in a lab. It takes me away to places I would never get to in the flesh. You like it?"  
"Oh, I love it. Can I just hang out here sometimes to listen to it with you?"  
"Sure, I'd like that. I don't get company much these days with Nora running me down to everyone. The mad scientist that lives at the entrance to the neighborhood, she always says. Bitch, I don't like her, and I can't trust her one bit. I caught her in here snooping around a few days ago." I clenched my fist and tapped the desktop at that thought.  
"I'm sorry that you guys don't get along. I thought you would have something in common with her since you guys are both from before the war."  
"It's not your fault. I'm a lonely person, probably the most uncool loser you could have ever befriended, and you still think I'm the best thing since sliced bread. I don't know what I ever did to make you guys like me so much, but whatever floats your boat I guess."  
"Danse speaks so highly of you. I think you're so cool, but you're so sad. I hope that after you get to meet Elder Maxson and the crew on the Prydwen things will change for you." I looked at her and her eyes were lit up like I had just given her a grenade that exploded into stars or something.   
"Thanks. You want to take any Nuka with us on our trip to the airship. I'm sure we will be there for a few hours." I said as I got up and walked over to the fridge digging around for some goodies.  
"Sure I'd love some."  
"Okay. I'll grab a little bit of everything, and we can get over there. Wait-- How do you get onboard that thing?"  
Haylen laughed as she stood up and looked in the bag at the two dozen nuka cola's it now held.  
"A vertibird landed at the police station. We will all go there together for Maxson's address. Come on we better go." I slammed the fridge door shut, got into my old U.S. Army dress uniform and locked up the lab as we ran off to the police station.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading everyone and as always leave kudos if you liked it! :)


	4. At first glance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lorane gets to meet Elder Maxson for the first time, oh let the sparks fly!

As we boarded the vertibird, Danse, and Nora stared at my U.S. Army dress uniform with all the pins, ribbons, and medals on my chest. I had a high rank, Colonel, and not even Haylen knew that. I felt it was important to show military support seeing as the Army was a thing of the past and I wanted these people to take me seriously when I started to speak. A first impression is everything, and I wanted to start out with my best foot forward and with confidence.  
"I can't believe she's here. I can, but I had no idea she was an actual military officer." Nora whispered to Danse as we flew along. I watched the scene beneath us and shifted slightly as we started the final approach; I didn't like her tone towards me, but it made little difference what she thought of me personally.  
"Yeah, she's very impressive. I'm defiantly sold; she's been a huge help to us all, and so have you. But that woman right there is the one that will take us from where we are today to a future that we can have hope for. No more mutations, clean air, earth and water for all. No more fear and an efficient government that you can trust. I see becoming a great military leader and advisor for the Brotherhood."  
"I hope you're right Danse. I don't like her now, and I didn't like her before the war. How she said that her inventions were going to help humanity, and all they did was create this."  
"You can't blame her for that. The war happened after she disappeared and she didn't press the buttons on the nukes that killed so many. You shouldn't keep that over her head, Nora. It's not right."  
"Yeah well that's your opinion."  
She snapped under her breath as the vertibird was hoisted up onto the airship. We disembarked onto the flight deck, and Haylen was more than happy to carry the messenger bag with our loot in it. After Elder Maxson's address, he spoke with Nora and then he turned to me. I had never seen a man look at me the way he did. He watched me very carefully as I spoke softly to him and he was hiding behind that expression of his. He was young, probably about twenty or twenty-one, but he looked at me like I was a woman for sure. He did that different than any person I had ever met in my life, and it made me feel a little naked standing there with him.  
"It's nice to meet a pre-war soldier and scientist. I feel that we have a very important place for someone like you here. Please tell me about yourself and your work, I want to hear it from you directly as to not get confused with the rumors that have been circling around lately. Like the statement of: I never thought I would be standing here with the greatest inventor of death the universe had ever seen. I don't believe that does you justice Lorane."  
I looked into his eyes as he softened and he scanned my body slowly. I was nervous for the first time in a very long time being here with him, but I had to overcome it and make him listen to me. I had his attention I just needed to make sure I didn't lose it.  
"It's become known to me through multiple sources that you know a bit about me and my work but I want to let it be heard from my own lips that I had never any intention to make weapons for the military for the destruction of the entire human race. My work was on fusion cores, fusion cells and that sort of technology. I also had a hand in the development and implementation of the power armor models that most of you still use today."  
He smiled at me and put his hand on my shoulder, followed by running his hand down my sleeve and letting his hand drop off into the air beside me. "Yes I understand that. I would like you to tell me about the Helion Four project."  
I swallowed hard and took in a deep breath, formulating the words and phrases in a way to make it simple to comprehend.  
"The Helion Four project was designed by myself for a single purpose; to teleport a person a long distance in a matter of microseconds by dematerialization on one side and dematerialization on the destination side. The technology is extremely unstable and seeing as I ended up two hundred and thirty one years in the future I'm not sure if it is a very good idea to attempt to test the unit again. On top of that I don't have the proper facility for the use of the device or the amount of power it would take to run another test, at least not yet."  
He paced back and forth in front of me as I told him this and watched his dismay at the facts I had presented.  
"Paladin Danse has informed me that you have been a very good asset in the form of a soldier in the field. You have made an incredible amount of weapon's modifications in recent weeks and have been honing your skills as a marksman from all that I have heard. In your our right you have my respect for who you are and what you have accomplished in such a short time. I would like you to continue your progress on the modifications with your fusion technology and report directly to me from now on. Paladin Danse has his hands full with the vault dweller, Nora Nolan, and I have taken a keen interest in you and your work. I know it's a lot to take in but you and I are of the same caliber. I want to be able to count on you as I have counted on Paladin Danse, if you need anything you can ask both Danse and myself, anything you need, you'll have it and I'll make sure of it."  
He turned away from me for a moment and looked out over the wastes.  
That made me get rigid, and my military persona kicked in. He had read everything on me that was possible, and it was possible that he saw me as I was but he wasn't ready to play those cards yet. To him, I wasn't that damn mad scientist that everyone had coined me to be. It hurt to think that I had been attacked and tarnished while I had been absent, but I figured it was coming anyway. He looked at me and held his hand out for a shake. I was a little startled by it but I shook his hand, and he smiled again.  
"I'm giving you a field promotion to Knight-Sergeant. After all the things you have done so far, I'm sure you won't disappoint."  
"No sir. I most certainly will not."  
He looked into me with his eyes so soft and blue. Those eyes of his were almost the same color as mine, and he saw my soul hiding behind my eyes with them. There was no doubt about it, he was different in every way conceivable, and I didn't know how to handle that. I clicked with him; I could speak with him, and he understood me perfectly. My words made sense to him, and he could interpret the knowledge just like an older man would have, he was much more mature than I had originally thought he would be.  
I watched him look at me with a deep tenderness, and he was watching me so intensely with some sort of emotional attachment that stemmed from deep within. That moment started a perpetual motion that couldn't have been stopped until we slammed into each other at some point, I just didn't realize it then. We looked into each other for what seemed like an eternity until he finally spoke to break up the tension that slowly crept around the room.  
"Good, I knew you wouldn't. Nora, well I'm not so sure about her but you. Well, you are probably the best thing that ever happened to us. Go meet the crew and enjoy some time on the Prydwen. When you're done, come back to the flight deck and speak with me after Nora and Danse leave."  
"Yes, sir!" I snapped to attention and dismissed myself to find Haylen down the hallway waiting for me. As I turned I thought he took in a deep breath as to capture my scent with his eyes closed. I had done something to him without even knowing what it was and he licked his lips as I met up with Haylen and vanished into the belly of his ship.  
He stood there where I had stood, thinking about the soft swells under my uniform, my smooth skin and my slicked back long black hair. I was a high and tight, straight laced soldier in that dress uniform and the nostalgia of my long lost past made him feel very relaxed in my presence. He reached into his coat pocket and held his hand there on it, something hidden from view. He turned back to the wastes and pulled out the photograph but only for a second before replacing it and leaning over to stretch his back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always if you liked it leave me some kudos and stick around for the ever exciting last chapter! Thanks for reading and have a great day!


	5. Show and Tell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lorane's presence on the Prydwen has a dramatic effect on the crew as her different ways help some many others have a 'better day.'

"Wow. I have never seen that man smile in my life. What did you say to him?" Haylen said pulling out a soda from the bag and handing it to me.  
"I didn't say much, but I like the way he thinks. I have a good feeling about him." I took a gulp of the soda and started into the mess hall. Nora and Danse were talking to some of the crew, and she kicked me as I passed her. I brushed the mark off my pant leg, and she snorted at me.  
"Bitch!" I handed Haylen my hat and Nora turned to me blushing.  
"Asshole!" She snapped back as I brought my chest up and clenched my left fist behind me.  
"Oh come on now, what the hell is your problem, Nora?!" I burned her with my anger that was once pointed at Dr. Turnmikel but found a new appreciation in her selfish, immature ways.  
"My problem is that you exist," She said pushing her chest into mine.  
"It looks like this airship isn't big enough for the two of us, so why don't you make like a good little birdie and fly the fuck off." I pushed he backwards a couple of steps with my weight and glared deep into her eyes.  
My glare burned her face, and she backed off walking away. Danse was in shock that I did that to her, but I didn't care.   
"She's not ever going to talk to me like that. I will never take that sort of talk from anyone."   
I walked away from him and down the way to speak to Teagan. He was in the airship's store area, and Haylen told me he liked challenges. I enjoyed to make modifications for weapons and ammo, so I thought we would have something in common with each other.  
"Well hello, you must be the scientist that I have heard so much about. My name is Teagan but I suppose you had already gathered that long before I laid eyes on you."  
I smiled at him and tossed a laser rifle modification on the counter for him to examine.  
"It's nice to meet you Teagan, I'm Lorane Geissler. I enjoy being around people that like challenges and since you say you're trapped here in this cage I would like to challenge you with modifications for just about everything."  
His face lit up as he looked over the laser modification and laughed.  
"I like you. I didn't know what to think when you strolled up here in the uniform of yours but I know that you're not like anyone else around here. Hell, put it there!" He held his hand out and we shook. I took out a pair of Nuka-Cola Quantum's and he held his in his hand for a moment spinning it slowly with a smile brightly adorning his face.   
"I was wondering if you could do me a favor. I have a list of items that people might want and I will let them make requests of me here through you if that's ok. Things like modifications, music, and different sorts of odds and ends."  
"I would love to Lorane. Here I will make a special area just for these sorts of things and then people can come by anytime for the requests."  
"Thank you Teagan and I'll see you again soon. I hope to make a trip up here every couple of days. If you need me sooner you can make an automated message on the 150 mHz band and I'll pick it up."  
"That sounds great Lorane, again thank you and stay safe." His smile warmed my heart as I walked away from his shop. I liked that fact that these people we so nice and accepting of me.  
Haylen and I made our way over to speak to Quinlan. He was a nerd, but I would help him anyway I could. Besides, I could make copies of the documents he was looking for, and he would never know the difference. I was slightly irritated by him in the fact that he wasn't easy on the eyes and his accent was a bit of an annoyance from my past.   
Now I met Cade; he was freakin awesome human being. I like that man, and he was so easy to talk to. I walked into his office and he immediately drawn to my presence as if by an invisible force. His sweet smile made me feel like I was talking to my school science teacher from years ago.  
"Hello Lorane. How are you doing?"  
"I'm great Doctor, I understand that you need me to do so tests for your records."  
"That's right."  
We hit it off with a two-hour conversation about crashing vertibirds, exploding shells, blast damage radius theory and various wounds before Nora came in to break up our good time.   
We glared at each other as she stood at the entrance of the medbay. Cade looked at me and then at her and me again. I wasn't in the mood for a fight so I decided to take the high road on this one.  
"Cade it was great getting to know you. Let's make this a date and I owe you a drink on my next visit. Thank you Doc." I shook his hand as he smiled at me.  
"You're very welcome Lorane. Come back soon, I had a nice time."  
I snarled slightly at Nora as I walked past her and she took my place inside. Danse grabbed my arm and walked me down the hall towards Elder Maxson's quarters. I flipped my arm free of his grasp and looked up at him in his tin can.  
"Unhand me Paladin, what is the meaning of this?"  
He looked down and sighed gently as to what to say to me.  
"Please would you try and get along with her for all of our sakes?"  
"Yeah sure. Whatever you say, just keep her on a short leash and everything'll be kosher." I put on my ha and walked away from him.  
I met up with an older man in the mess hall by the name of Paladin Brandis. He looked me over and said hello. I shook his hand and he turned my hand over looking at my skin very carefully. His eyes were sad and tired as he stood there looking at me but then something odd happened. He looked at me like I was a long lost friend of his and asked the most unusual question of me.  
"Are you an intellectual?" His eyes slowly coming back up to mine.  
"Yes, sir I am. My name is Lorane Geissler. I'm the---"  
"Oh yes, the scientist. I have heard a lot about you. I wanted to thank you for starting the search for me that,--that Nora woman finished. I would have like seeing you help me that day, rather than her with that hero complex on her shoulder."  
I didn't really know what to think of his statement but he was an interesting man nonetheless.   
"What do you mean by that?"  
He smiled and looked around the room for peeping ears.  
"I don't like her and I think she's just a crazy bitch! But I'm glad I came back to the Brotherhood. I saw your request list in Teagan's shop, I would love it if you could bring a music player and holotapes up here for me to listen. There's nothing left to do for me but wait and I would appreciate that very much." I held his hands and smiled for him.  
"I would love to, I'll make sure that you have something nice to listen to while you recover your strength Brandis." He was upset that he wasn't clear for active duty, and we spoke in length about his team and their deaths. It made me a sad to see an older gentleman walking around with death riding on his shoulder, and I hoped he would not let it get the better of him. He was so happy after we spoke that he hugged me and almost started crying. I slowly walked away and realized that I was changing things here just because of how I was and I wasn't doing it on purpose.  
I decided to take a vertibird to my lab and grab some stuff for the crew as a gesture of good faith and friendship. I returned and dropped it all off to various people and especially Tegan. I plans for many mods that I thought he would get a kick out of. It was getting late and I decide to take a quick break out on the flight deck before going to talk to Teagan.  
I returned to Teagan to get the list as requests before I left and I was surprised at how popular it was when he handed me a piece of paper. His smile was beaming from ear to ear as he looked at it in my hand.  
"Lorane, we love all this great stuff you have been doing for us lately. You're just an old soul here to warm our lives, and I can appreciate that. Apparently so can this mystery man. Here's the note he asked me to give you before you left. I hope you come back with some extra mods too. The challenge has been a blast, and I'm looking forward to our next match."  
"Oh, you're too kind Teagan, thank you and goodnight."  
"Goodnight dear."  
He smiled and laughed at me as I turned away from him. There was something he wasn't telling me but I was okay with that. I liked surprises sometimes. I looked over the list as I slowly walked away; Mods for Teagan, music tapes for several people, love songs for an anonymous man by way of Teagan, chess games with Brandis, drinks with Cade and tech talk with Quinlan.   
I opened the note and read it as I walked down the hallway.  
"Dear Scientist,  
I have been enjoying those holotapes you bring up here. Please do me a favor and find me the deepest, most romantic love song you can. One that would make a grown man cry. I would like that very much.  
Thank you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave kudos if you liked it and have a great day!


	6. Time heals these wounds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elder Maxson has taken an interest in our scientist, perhaps things are looking up for this poor sad soul.

Maxson summoned Danse to speak with him privately in his quarters.  
"Danse tell me about that scientist woman that you brought here. I would like to know if the rumors of her being mad are really true or not."  
"Arthur she's not mad one bit, not was far as I can tell. I have traveled with her a lot, and she's nothing like anything I had ever seen, at least not recently."  
"What do you mean recently?"  
Danse sighed at what he was about to say to his best friend, but it had to be known to him.  
"She's so much like Sara Lyons. I can't put my finger on it. She's a soldier, honorable and amazing him her own right, but she has qualities that she doesn't realize she possesses. The other day she taught Nora the basics of shooting a laser rifle without the recoil springs in the weapon. I thought it was unbelievable myself, fucking outstanding actually. She has taught everyone around her something that they didn't know before, even me."  
"Oh, what did you learn from her?"  
"That just because someone looks the way they do, doesn't mean you can judge them by that alone. She walks the walk, Arthur. She took on a deathclaw single-handedly when I got taken out of commission by it in the Glowing Sea. She saved my life, and after she had killed it, she fixed my armor so we could continue the mission. That woman is the one that will get every job done to its fullest. What are you really asking me, Arthur?"  
Maxson stood looking at his friends face and making calculations in his mind for a few seconds before answering the question.  
"Do you think she's the one?"  
Danse was taken aback. He didn't know how to react to this sudden burst of truth from his friend.   
"Only if you think she is. She's so much like Sara in so many ways, but she's not Sara, Arthur. Sara will never be coming back, and I want to make sure you can handle Lorane before you go feet first with her. She's very eccentric, extremely intelligent and she's been eyeing you. I hate to say this, but she's deeply emotional, just like you are. I don't want the two of you to get hurt; I'm saying this as a friend Arthur. If you really think she's the one, then there's only one way to find out. That's your journey, and I hope you take it. Let me know if you need to talk some more. I'll always be here for you and take care with what I said. She doesn't know you are interested in her, not yet anyway."   
Danse left Arthur sitting on his bed thinking about the conversation. He had left a request with Teagan for a special love song, the one he heard me play the first night I was out on the flight deck on my MDC. He knew that I didn't see him as he hid out of sight and listened to its sweet sad melody. He knew if that song arrived on the Prydwen with his name on it I was the one he had been longing for, the one Sara told him he would one day find.   
Early that next morning....  
I was back at the lab, everything was just the way it was as I left, and everything in its place. The clock on the wall ticked singing its endless song to my equipment that laid out every which way. It said 0245 and I was not even tired from my trip up to the Prydwen. I was thinking about Nora, and how I didn't like her way towards me. The thought that she was going to try her shit with me later got me thinking that I better start moving some of the most sensitive equipment and testing somewhere else. But where?   
The light bulb came on, and I knew exactly where, the vault.   
Just a moment or two later Danse came into my lab with a concerned look on his face. I set some test tubes out for a night time marathon of work and looked over at him.  
"Everything okay Danse?" He looked over at me and shook his head no.  
"What is it?"  
"I need you to do some tests for me please."  
"What kind of tests?" I narrowed my eyes at him and spun in my chair and got to a standing position quickly.   
"Fertility testing. I need to make sure of something." I stood there looking at him in contempt.  
"I'm not a chemical biologist Danse."  
"Please, I'm begging you. Nora can't find out about this."  
I glared at him and went looking for the testing equipment for him. I few minutes later I gave him a plastic cup and a magazine. He looked at me in confusion.  
"You've got to be kidding me." I started laughing at him uncontrollably, and I almost ended up on the floor.  
"You're not funny! What the hell am I supposed to do with this?"  
I motioned for him to follow me and I put him in the bathroom.  
"Okay. Now look at the mag, jerk off into this cup, pee in that cup over there, bring all of it back to me and go home for the night." I walked away laughing as I started working on the new radiation experiments from the senior scribe on the airship. It was a little while later when he brought everything out and set it down on the tray.  
"Thanks, Lorane."  
"No problemo Danse. Good night."  
He took off for home, and I looked over at the samples and stretched in my chair. I shook my head and changed the song list I was playing on my MDC. I started playing a man from a time gone by call Roy Orbison. It started playing, and I went to work on his samples quickly. I set them into the test tubes and started the machine when I heard footsteps behind me outside. I knew it was Nora, and she sucked at trying to sneak up on me.   
"Nora! Get your peeping ass in here right now!" I didn't even turn to her as she slowly walked into the room.  
"What the fuck are you doing out there in the dark huh?! You want answers; you need to ask the questions." I watched the terminal scan the sequences and spit out the results. Nora shifted behind me, and I could feel her nervousness.  
"What are you doing in here all night?"  
"Well. I do all sorts of things in here. I make things; I test things, and I make sure I have documentation for everything that I have done. Paperwork is one of the most time-consuming things I do, but it's worth it." I changed the screen to another test, and she advanced to me slowly.  
"Do you sleep much?"  
"No, not really. I have insomnia from working so much in a lab underground with no windows, so I stay up for a few days and sleep a couple of days. It's a new sleep cycle that I like, and I don't waste a lot of time sleeping." I turned around to face her, and she looked at the ground unable to make eye contact with me.  
"I'm sorry about trashing you. I can see that you're not a mad scientist, and I thank you for helping everyone."  
"Don't thank me just yet Nora. I haven't blown up anything lately, and I know the minute I do you'll probably condemn me again."  
"I promise I will try not to. I have to go. Goodnight Lorane."  
"Goodnight."  
I watched her walk away, and I knew she was going to do something really bad to me. She was filled with jealousy, and she wore envy like it were a mink coat. I knew right then I had to move my lab to the vault right away.   
I leaned way back in my chair and put my hands behind my head as the love songs played on in my lab, and I came to the realization that I wasn't the only person on the planet that was lonely. I thought about Elder Maxson and how he was. I made sure that I never forgot the way he looked at me when we first met on the airship, his Prydwen. He tried to be harsh to me, but we weren't fooling each other, just everyone around us. He was brutally handsome, and I didn't know how or why, but I could feel the emotions flowing around that man. I hummed the song away as I spun in my chair with a new fascination, I wonder who's the romantic one looking for these love songs that I play in the night.  
Elder Maxson slowly entered his quarters after another long day work and speeches. He laid his coat on the desk and dropped onto his bed. He reached into his chest pocket and pulled out a photograph of Sara Lyons. He brushed it gently with his fingertips as a tear started to roll down his cheek.  
"Oh, Sara, you were so right, that love would eventually find me. I think I found somebody, and I had no idea it would take nearly a decade. I miss you so much, and I hope that my new found feelings can finally put you behind me in memory. My sweet memories of you."   
He cried silently as he laid the photo on his chest and put his hand over his eyes with the tears leaking around his fingers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh Maxson, can he leave Sara in the past. Let's find out as the story continues!!


	7. Look around you, this is your future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Burying the dead brings back painful memories for everyone, but can they be overcome enough to let love grow?

It took me a few days but I managed to move all the important stuff to the vault and I had the painstaking chore of giving everyone in that place a proper burial. I couldn't stand the fact that they were discarded there like trash and used in an unsanctioned science experiment by that damn Vault-Tec. It took me a little better than a week to dig all the graves, make all the markers and place the bodies where they belonged. I worked at night, that way it didn't look like I was up to anything and I could be in peace. I cried when I buried Nate Nolan, after what everyone had told me about how he died trying to save his baby and Nora acted like he was just a piece of furniture. He had no military honors for his burial service, just me and a shovel. I didn't like to think that way about people but I felt cold and disconnected.   
"Here we are alone in the dark fighting with the very demons that we condemn." I spoke softly to myself as I pulled out a very old bottle of whiskey and examined it carefully in the moonlight.  
That was the first time in many years I cracked the bottle and drank under the full moon alone in a grave yard. 'This is how I'm going to end up if I don't have any friends, seeing as my family is all dead and gone. I had to bury them alone like this'.  
It brought back the bad days, the darkness in my life before I started my work with the military. I sat there and drank the entire bottle, but in the moonlight I thought I saw a man standing out there on the ridge overlooking the cemetery. He had gone now but I thought, I swore, it was Elder Maxson there. His long battlecoat covering his body and a wisp of cigar smoke that lingered in his absence.  
'I though he never left the airship. Why would he come out here to watch me be the caretaker of the dead? Did he really care or was this a figment of my imagination?'  
Elder Maxson walked back to the vertibird that waited in the darkness for him a long way past the ridge. He tossed the cigar down and jumped back onboard. The bird flew away as he wiped a tear from his eye. He knew I was honorable and noble at the same time, just as Sara predicted his true love would be. He had to see what I was doing for himself and it answered all his questions about my personality. I was exactly who he had been longing for in his dreams, as he laid at night listening to the very love songs I had played myself to sleep to for so many years. He tossed and turned in his sleep but the love that flowed from the holotapes I made for him soothed his crying and eased his deeply seated emotional distress. He dreamed of holding me in his sleep, with my body warm against his, my soft skin pressing against his and finally those tears stopped in the night.  
I was in my lab that next morning when Danse came in for his results. I had been getting ready to go back to the Prydwen for a few days and I put the holotapes into my bag for the mystery man. Danse sat down and waited for me to talk to him.  
"Hello there Danse how are you today?"  
"I'm doing great Lorane how are you?"  
"I'm okay. I had something strange happened to me last night when I went out for a walk but- oh you don't need to hear about that. You're here for these tests."   
I sat down and opened the file folder. I read it and looked up at him, he was smiling at me with his beautiful brown eyes.  
"I want to know what happened. Please tell me."  
I closed the file, leaned back in my chair crossing arms and looked at him.  
"Okay. I was out drinking to old memories when I thought I saw Maxson standing on a ridgeline above looking down at me in the moonlight. It only lasted a minute or two but I swear it was him."  
"Huh. I see. It could have been him. It wouldn't surprise me one but if it were, he can be a bit of a mystery, even to me, sometimes."  
"What can you tell me about him?"  
Danse smiled and he knew what I was doing. He knew Maxson had taken interest in me and it was my turn to toss a stone in the pond.  
"He's my best friend. I have known him since he was a child. He's a deeply emotional man, the girl he loved got killed and he rose up through the ranks performing incredible feats. All those stories you hear about him are true. He's the last of the Maxson bloodline, the founding line of the Brotherhood and he has done so much for us. He can be a hard guy to get along with if you piss him off but when you can reach him on a personal level, well he's a real sweetheart. He's the greatest military leader in the history of the world and I would follow him anywhere."  
"I would too. I like that guy, he talks to me like a human being. I feel fortunate to have met all of you and I have no way to tell you this other than bluntly. I can never get the collider to work again, so I will stay here with everyone and I would like to get to know him better. Just don't tell anyone else that." I said shaking my index finger at him.  
"Not a soul. He's been asking about you a lot. I think you guys should have dinner sometime."  
I smiled at that and thought to myself: 'Ya the way that we used to do things in the world we knew before.'  
"Okay. Arrange it and here's the tests. You sir, are fertile as any flower from before the war. You are not shooting blanks so keep that in mind." He looked relieved and I gave him a handful of condoms from my desk drawer. Now he looked horrified by my action. He started to open his mouth when I stopped him.  
"Don't try and fool me. You two were so loud last night you could have heard it on the Prydwen. Take this vial, this is to be given to Nora. She needs to drink that entire thing twenty-four to forty-eight hours after unprotected sexual intercourse or you two will end up being parents. It's none of my business if that's what you want but this is just in case you don't. You can slip it into a bottle of Nuka Cola if you want to keep it a secret from her, but my advice to you is talk to her about her future Danse and make sure you guys are going down a road you both want to travel to the end. I have to go to the Prydwen for my weekly visit soon, so I'll be seeing you later."  
I grabbed my bag and Danse stood up. He hugged me and the joy in his eyes said everything.  
"Thanks Lorane. You're a good friend."  
He shoved those in his pocket and left the lab. I locked up and tossed a flare down for the vertibird to pick me up. I enjoyed my time up there so much that I would forget what time it was and just spend the night. I arrived and all my new friends were there waiting for me in the mess hall. I had new portable holotape player to showoff and Brandis made sure that everyone was there to hear it play for the first time. They were clapping and the bottles of whatever drink they choose were being passed out for consumption. Danse and Nora had just arrived when the clapping started to the song "Oh, Pretty Woman" and I walked down the hallway as they all hooted and hollered at me.   
It was a real party, Haylen, Cade, Brandis and so many others were laughing with their smiling faces and that made me feel so good. I wasn't just some murdering mad scientist, I was a cool cat and these people were my friends. I loved them all so much and this made my mind up. I would never think about my past again if I didn't have to. It was now time to look into the future. I looked over my shoulder and there he was. Maxson was leaning against the wall near his quarters rocking his body to the song watching me. As my eyes met his all I could hear was that song 'You Got It' and I drifted towards him in my thoughts.  
Every time I look into your lovely eyes,  
I see a love that money just can't buy.  
One look from you, I drift away.  
I pray that you are here to stay.  
He watched me with a hot, deep intensity and I felt even more drawn to him, because in that same moment he did the same thing I was doing. His mind had drifted into that song just as mine had and we were listening to the same tune, watching each other with a deep sexually charged emotional tension that could have filled the entire Prydwen with a thick smoke screen. All the others were dancing in the mess, even Danse and Nora when I slowly walked my way towards him. He was smiling as I got closer and we were both happy to see each other there.  
"Hi Lorane." He smiled vibrantly at me.  
"Hi Arthur." I cooed to him as I slid up next to him leaning there.  
We smiled at each other as we leaned against the wall getting closer and closer, as Danse and Nora watched from afar. We were talking but they couldn't hear us. Danse started laughing and turned Nora away from us.   
"Hey! I was watching that!" Nora blurted out angrily.  
"Oh I know, but my best friend is going to need some privacy so keep yourself right here. You can watch me."  
"I can't believe that you hooked them up like that."  
"I didn't hook up anything. They have been eyeing each other like that ever since he first saw her on the command deck. She's not like you Nora, she is something that waits for that personal moment and takes the opportunity. She is a skillful tactician, just as much as he is and they will enjoy a sparring match."  
"Wow. Enough said." They continued to dance as the song changed and Arthur and I disappeared into his quarters. We sat down at the table where he had a dinner set out for us.  
"So Danse asked you to do this for me huh?" I asked as he smiled at me blushing wildly and doing a horrible job trying to hide it from me.  
"Yes he did. I was a little afraid that you wouldn't come up here just for me, but I guess I was wrong in a way."   
"You could have asked me Arthur and I would have been here to hang out with you in a moment's notice."  
We both laughed at that and ate dinner discussing the past, science, and everything else. He had personal questions for me and I felt comfortable enough in his presence to answer them with lying about it. He was that sort of person that you could just open up to and I had not felt that way in a very long time, it made this experience refreshing.  
"Lorane, have you ever been with anyone in your life?"  
"No I never had the time for anything other than my work. It consumed my life at the time. I-uh-I had lost everything in life up to that point. My parents were killed in a car accident and I was only thirteen, so I ended up living alone in our house since my older sister had moved out and gotten married and --." I choked up a little and swallowed it back.  
"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."  
"I feel that I need to, and it'll be better if you know a little bit about me. I want you to know about me Arthur and not what people say. Talk is cheap when that's all you can hold against someone who walks the walk like I have. I have seen and done things that I'm not proud of but that's my burden to carry and no one else's."  
"I understand, I have been through a lot myself so I can relate to how you must be feeling about the past. I'm glad that you and I are friends and we can talk about things like this in a discrete manner."  
"Thank you for thinking of me as a friend Arthur. I didn't have any friends in my life before I had my little accident with the collider. Now that I have everyone here to support me and help me along I feel like I have a family again. You have no idea how much that means to me and I want to remain here as a part of the Brotherhood of Steel for the remainder of my life if you'll have me."  
"I would be honored, now enough about the future, I would like you to finish your past and I want to make sure that pressure is off your chest."  
He was so sincere in the way he spoke as if he was a long lost childhood friend of mine.  
"I was always so good with math and science in school. I was making things in the garage long before my parents died and I had started a new project for the school science fair that year. My project was about fusion technology and my teacher was so happy to see my progress. Every day I spent in that garage the better and smarter I got, but I hit a stumbling block after the accident. Then my sister and her family got killed when an airplane crashed into their neighborhood and their house burned up with them inside. I remember the funerals and how there wasn't anyone there that I knew except my school science teacher. He was so fond of me and my projects that he was over at my home more than he was at his own house."   
"After working with him for fifteen years and everything I had built and he proposed to the military I got in with the Army as an officer. He came to my commissioning ceremony, the party after and then a few short days later he passed away. His wife called me on the telephone to tell me the news. I flew there to his funeral and that day was the worst day of my life. He had left me his music collection and I still have that collection today. All those holotapes were the ones we listened to as we built the armor, the fusion systems, the cars and the weapons in that garage so many years ago. It was because he believed in my abilities that everything we did together was monumental. All this technology is a combined effort of his and mine. We never meant for it to become the very force of destruction that would end the very world that we knew."  
We sat together and continued to talk about his life, the deathclaw he killed, Elder Lyons and Sara, the other Elders that just didn't stand up to the challenge and how he killed Sheppard. We also talked about Danse and how much Arthur trusted and admired him.  
"Arthur I'm so sorry about Sara. I wish I could have met her and her father, they sounded like truly inspirational people. Did you ever get a chance to tell her how you felt about her?"  
His eyes started to well up and he sniffed a little bit, I hadn't realized that it was still an open wound to him and I felt like shit suddenly for asking that.  
"No, I never did. I wished in a way that I had. We talked about love interests for me and people that would be good for me in her opinion. She was always the one looking out for me and she gave me so much advice. Danse showed up and I had them both as friends, but after her death Danse was the only one that knew how I really felt. He kept it a secret from everyone else and I found he was the only one I could truly confide in. Until now."   
His eyes were locked into mine as I could see his soul gently turn behind those windows he let me look through. I felt like he thrust a switchblade into my heart and it was slowly tearing me apart inside. I held myself together but I knew he could reach my soul just as I touched his. He intrigued me so much that I was a mystery to him in some many ways. We were diving deep into thing we hadn't done or discussed in long time and I could feel us both heal at each other's words, as if we were lovers touching each other gently in the dark.   
It had been many long hours and everyone else had gone to bed. I walked out of his quarters to see what was what when he joined me.  
"It's so quiet up here." I whispered.  
"Yes it is. Come on lets go outside for a bit." He motioned for me to go with him and we ended up on the flight deck together in a small spot where we weren't easily seen by prying eyes.  
"I had a great time Arthur. I want to see you again." I said as I leaned against the railing. He leaned against it next to me and watched me with his sweet blue eyes.   
"I would like that very much Lorane."  
"I'm tired, but there is nowhere left to sleep would it be okay if I slept on the floor of your room?" He smiled at that and nodded.  
"It would be fine if you slept in the bed and I'll take the floor for the night."  
"I can't let you do that. You need your sleep more than I and I want to sleep on the floor."  
"Okay. You do whatever you need to and I'll do the same. I know you're a proper lady and I wouldn't do that to you. Come on."  
We returned to his quarters and I slept on the floor in his battle coat. It was warm and it smelled like him, that would be something I would treasure forever, that and his kind actions. I drifted away to sleep as he laid in his bed watching me. This was one of the first times I hadn't cried myself to sleep since I got here. He slowly got out of bed and turned on the portable holotape player as low as it could go, to one of the love songs I had been bringing up here. It was Roy Orbison's "You Got It" and the next song was "I Drove All Night" his favorite songs so far. He laid back down in his bed and lip singed the songs as they played into the night. As the second song started to play he rolled over on his stomach and looked down at me. He reached down with one hand, gently pulled my hair back from my face and caressed my cheek with his fingertips. He slowly edged himself over the side of the bed just above me and kissed me on the cheek very so tenderly and I hummed at the feeling of warmth from his lips on my face.   
He was as much of a hopeless romantic as I was and I didn't know he was in love with me, not yet. It was so evident that he couldn't deny how he felt about me. Nobody had ever felt like that towards me before, I was always the one that got rejected by would be lovers, but now I had a secret admirer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave kudos if you liked it and I hope you finish this wonderful story!


	8. Accidents happen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh-no Lorane had one of here 'mad scientist' accidents, with everything on the line can she hold on and make it through this deviating set back?

That next morning I escaped Maxson's quarters in the early hours as to not start rumors. I had laid his coat over him, and he hummed in his sleep, oh how sweet he looked sleeping there. I had never seen a man sleeping before, and it was nice to see him smile with his eyes closed. I returned to my lab to finish a ton of work, and I couldn't stop thinking about the mystery man aboard the Prydwen and his special request.  
I liked the thought of him being as he was. 'Maxson you are so soft at heart, I will never let anyone hurt you that way.' I relished in that thought in my lab when it came to me like an epiphany. I dug through all my old stuff and there it was, the golden ticket holotape for deep emotional beauty and I shoved that in my pocket. I was day dreaming about Maxson, letting the song "You Got It" play over and over again in my head when Nora came stomping into the lab in a huff. I knew she was pissed off, but I didn't think she was pissed off at me.  
"Nora, what can I do for you?"  
She clenched her fists and her teeth, advanced on me and kicked my chair.  
"You fucking asshole! What have you and Danse been doing in here?!"  
She had a nasty wild look in her eyes, and I could see the raging jealousy in her face. I looked at her and stood up very slowly sliding my holster over my shoulder and taking the safety off of the gun.  
"I don't think I understand what you mean by that Nora?"  
I thought for sure she was going to hit me. If she did hit me, I was going to fucking shoot her in the leg.  
"You've been fucking him haven't you!" She was almost screaming as she jabbed her finger into my chest hard enough to start pissing me off.  
"No Nora. I haven't, would you rather I have been so you can just come over here and cap my ass for a reason." I said in a calm, soft tone of voice.   
Obviously, that was not the right thing to do as she decided to go ape-shit crazy on me. She punched me in the face, probably breaking my nose, and grabbed my hair pulling me outside with her. I slugged her back in the neck and as she let me go as I tripped her to the ground. All the commotion made a scene as we were now on the ground rolling around fighting, screaming profanities. She got on top of me and started choking me with her weak little hands around my neck. I pushed her up with my arms fully extended as she started screaming at me again.  
"You're an asshole! All you do is sit in that lab all day while Danse and I risk our lives out on missions, and then you think you can take him into your bed with you!"  
"I take no one into my bed you bitch!" I slapped her face and knocked her over on her side. I held her on the ground contemplating whether or not to slug her across that dirty mouth when I knew what to say to shut her the hell up about it. I leaned over her and whispered in her ear in a most erotic sinister tone.  
"The only man I would ever accept that way has blue eyes." I let go of her, and she looked up at me in shock with her mouth half gaped open.   
"Stop it! Stop it right now!" Danse started shouting running over to us. I got off of her and helped her to her feet as he started reprimanding her, and I slowly walked back into the lab.  
"You okay?" Danse said as he walked in.  
"Yeah, I'll be fine. You need to get her under control. I can't keep looking over my shoulder all the time."  
"I know. I'm sorry. I'll see you later."  
"Okay bye." I said shoving tissues up my nose and washing the blood off of my hands. I went back to work in the lab with my gun this time when someone else started through the door. I didn't even look at them I just pointed the muzzle of my sidearm in that direction when they stopped and gasped.  
"Is this a bad time I can always come back." It was Veronica Haylen, coming back after a long mission in the Glowing Sea. I immediately dropped the gun and replaced it in the holster.  
"Oh Veronica, shit! I'm so sorry I did that to you." I stood up and walked over to her, and she was shocked to see the tissue in my nose.  
"What the hell happened to you?"  
"Nora. But she's ten times worse than I am right now. Oh well, I guess she's just so stuck on herself that she's a wreck. I don't hold it against her really, it's just how she is."  
"I'm a little surprised to hear that from you. Hey, are you going back to the Prydwen tonight? I want to go with you, and everyone is waiting for some more of the music of yours. It'll be so much fun; it's always fun to be around you because you make things happen."  
I looked at her with skepticism and laughed as I tossed the tissue into my wastebasket.  
"Have you heard what you're saying, Veronica? You said I'm fun, and I make things happen!" I said in a most animated way making fun as see laughed at me.  
" Things happen to me, I'm just trying to mind my own business here and wam-o there it is in my face."  
She started laughing so hard she was snorting and that even made my sides hurt as I laughed along with her.   
"Okay, and yes I will meet you here at 2130. Don't be late, I'll be staying a week this time, and I expect you to be ready with that Nuka Cola you owe from the last game."  
"I won't be late, and I'll have it for you. I promise." We stood up, and I side hugged her as we walked outside into the sun. We waved to each other as she walked across the bridge.   
It was in the late afternoon now, and I had returned from locking down the vault. No one will get in there without all the pass codes from my MDC, and I will have a nice place to hide finally. I tapped the holotape in my pocket, my little gift to that mystery man, 'oh I hope that he makes his girl happy with this'. I sighed as I made it back home and I started shutting down everything inside. I made a decision a long time ago, to stop my work if I found someone that would have me and I would turn my attention to him if he existed. If I found him or he found me but, either way, I knew he existed. I was singing and dancing with a broom in the lab when Nora stood outside the windows. I danced outside, casting away the broom and pulled Nora into my arms and danced her into the lab.  
We danced around and around to the music that playing and I watched her stop being so mad and actually smile. We danced and started laughing and talking as Danse watched us from outside. We were having a good time for the first time we had ever been around each other, and it was an amazing feeling. The music stopped momentarily, and we stood there laughing at each other and what were had been doing just then.  
"Oh Lorane, you are such the dancer. I never thought I would be dancing with you, and I'm sorry about how I have been towards you. I should have never thought that way about you." She hugged me, and I felt her sob gently as I held her.   
"It's okay Nora. I had to get used to people treating me like I was a threat all the time but I'm so glad you don't hate me. All I ever wanted to do was help you and anybody else who needed it for that matter."   
"Oh, I'm didn't mean to start to cry. I--."  
"Take your time, I have all the time in the world if it makes you feel better and if you are doing this than I guess you do consider me to me your friend after all."  
She cried even harder, and Danse slipped away into the neighborhood pleased that we were finally getting along with each other. I sat and discussed everything Nora wanted to say to me about herself. Her son, her husband, and her life after the vault. How she professed her love for Danse and they have been making love in secret every chance they had. It warmed my heart to hear her talk about everything with me and it made her calm down to a very relaxed pleasant mood.  
"Lorane I can't thank you enough for burying my husband, and I'm sorry I wasn't there to help you or honor him. I found the test results that you gave Danse, and I'm happy that you did this for us both. I'm thankful for everything you have been doing, I have been so selfish and acting like the center of attention for so long that I didn't even think about anyone else. I'm sorry Lorane. I see now that you and Danse are friends and colleagues, and I should have never thought about you like that."  
I laughed and looked down at the tabletop.  
"Well one of us around here needs to think that way. I think back on it now, and I can say that it's a funny thing to laugh about something so serious after the facts have all been brought to light."  
She looked at me in the most perplexed way just then. She tilted her head and scrunched her face.  
"You--um- you have never been with anyone?"  
"No ma'am. I never had that sort of opportunity; I never gave myself that much credit."  
"Oh my god Lorane. That's--that's so sad. I didn't know."  
"It's ok Nora. Maybe someday I'll get that chance if I manage to life long enough."  
Nora hugged me hard, and I was completely taken off my guard at her reaction to my life experience or lack their of rather.  
"Lorane I hope you find what you're looking for out there. I know you'll get love someday. I found what I was looking for, or at least, I think I have, and I will always have you as a friend from now on. I promise to be there for you if you ever need me."  
"Thank you, Nora. I appreciate your kindness. Now go run along to Danse it's starting to get dark, and he needs your love. Goodnight."  
"Goodnight Lorane!" She said running out happily down the street to her house.  
I was running one final test on some new type of explosives in the lab, a special napalm that would detonate in a given time after it attached itself to whatever it was targeted to and either burst into flames or explode when there was a problem. The machine stopped suddenly, and in order to stop the reaction I had to have it spinning. I slapped the thing, and it did little good as the pressure began to rise to an unacceptable level quickly.   
"No way!" I hit again harder, and I heard the motor whine as it flew apart on the table and ripped the plug from the wall. The colors inside the chamber started to change, and the glass began to bubble slightly. I ripped the machine off the table and sprinted outside into the evening air with it.  
'Oh god, I have to get it away from here before it explodes!'  
"Run!! Everybody run for cover!!! There is going to be an accidental explosion!! Run away! Run away quickly!!!"   
I screamed with this burning hot thing in my hands, and I knew as soon as it breached the glass and hit the open air it would be all over.  
I ran up onto the bridge and threw the thing as hard as I could into the water and slammed myself down onto the wooden decking, as it hit the water the explosion ripped the bridge apart and set me flying into the air violently like a toy, backward to the street, through the bushes of my yard and I landed face down in the dirt over thirty feet away. The blast was deafening, and my ears were ringing so loudly I couldn't hear a thing, but I was on fire! I rolled around wildly putting out my clothes as the other settlers ran over and helped me. The blood was running from my ears, nose and mouth at this point as I stood up slowly with the settlers around me attempting to stop me.   
"Watch out!" I yelled as the debris from everything involved in blast rained down, I tried to run for cover when Danse grabbed me. I fell to my knees and tried to stand again as he pulled me up. I could see his mouth moving, but I couldn't hear a damn thing. He was shouting at me in words I couldn't hear and popped off a vertibird flare. He laid me on the ground and made the action of 'stay there' to me as he ran over to some of the setters to make sure they were okay. I had a hard time trying to stay awake, and I was so worried about everybody else that I hadn't realized I had the clothes burned off my back. Nora rushed to my side, and I watched in silence as the vertibird landed. Danse came over as Nora helped carry me and we were whisked away to the Prydwen.  
Cade and Maxson were standing on the flight deck waiting. I slowly exited with their help and Maxson wrapped his arm around me to help me get inside.  
"What the happened down there?! I saw the explosion from the command deck!"  
"Lorane's lab had an accident, one of the experimental explosives started to go off, so she threw it outside to minimize the damage, at least, no body died today."  
"I hope nobody dies today, the day isn't over yet." Maxson said, and I lost my ability to stay awake.  
Maxson lifted me into his arms, and he carried me down to his quarters with Danse's assistance. Nora was in bad shape emotionally as Cade and his team started working on me; they peeled the melted and burned clothing from my body along with the shrapnel that had found me. I was being stitched up by Cade when I woke up slowly and came to the realization that I was laying on this cold, hard table in Maxson's room. It was hurt all over, and I felt this overpowering feeling of guilt. Cade saw that I was waking up, and he rubbed my shoulder gently.  
"Hey, there you are. I thought we lost you for sure when Maxson dragged you in here like you were. I'm so glad to see that you're here still, and everyone else will be too. They're all waiting just outside that door when you're ready. Poor Nora she's been a nervous wreck seeing you like that." He said smiling at me as I licked my lips. He clipped the last stitch off the needle, and I smacked my lips trying to get some saliva.  
"Nora, she's not hurt is she?" I choked out in a raspy crackling voice as I attempted to move.  
"She's going to be just fine. I gave her a sedative so she can sleep. How do you feel?"  
I closed my eyes and blinked fast as he looked into my eyes kneeling on the ground next to the table.  
"I feel great. Never better." I lifted my one arm up, pointed to the ceiling and smiled at him.   
"Always the smart ass, but I love that about you Lorane. I'll send Maxson in now, and I hope you can please be more careful next time."  
"Okay. I'll try. You owe me a drink still Cade. When I'm back on my feet, we'll party like we were supposed to today."  
"Make that a date!" He said gently bumping my shoulder with his fist. He left the room, and I heard all the voices outside the door as he exited. Shortly after that, I heard cheering and clapping in celebration of my condition. I laughed at the sound on the other side of the door.  
"Yeah, that's right those are my friends out there. I'm so lucky." I said to the empty room. Maxson slowly made his way into the room and he looked over my burned back grimacing. He slowly put his warm hand on my back where it hadn't suffered the second-degree blisters, and I hummed at his touch. That was the first time his bare skin had touched mine, to my knowledge.  
"I knew that you would do that. Hello, Arthur. Sorry about all this trouble, I had no idea this was going to be so much fun."  
"Oh, Lorane. I'm so glad that you're okay. I don't know what I would've done if you got killed. I don't want to think about it."  
"Then don't. I'm not dead, and I don't plan on being until I'm super old. I mean like aged a longtime. I want you to help me up; I don't like laying here like this. I don't have any other clothes, though, do you think I could borrow something of yours?"  
"Sure I have an extra uniform here that you can use." He ripped it out of the cabinet and helped me sit up on the table.   
My entire torso had been wrapped in bandages, and I noticed a nasty cut that Cade had sewn up on my arm. I was in nothing more than these bandages and my underwear, and I could feel Arthur's hands shaking as he helped me put the uniform on. I stood on the cold decking in my bare feet as he zipped the front of it closed. I looked into his eyes as he was now face to face with me. I didn't think that we were the same size, but I guess I was wrong about that too. He was so close to me I could see every detail of his skin and hear his breathing in and out. He slowly closed the gap between us and hugged me gently. He buried his face in my shoulder and started crying very quietly. I slowly painfully raised my arms and wrapped them around him as I felt my tears slowly drain down my face. I smelled his hair, and I held him in my arms. He was sweet, and Danse had been right, his emotions ran so very deep. We must have stood like that for twenty minutes or so when we both found a way to stop the tears and wipe them away.   
I walked with him, and as he slowly opened the door, everyone was waiting in high anticipation for a glimpse of me. They all started yelling with joy, falling over each other cheering and the music started in the background of their cries. Everyone filed into the mess hall, and a small party erupted around us as I sat down with Paladin Brandis. We played games, and drank, which helped with the pain, and I talked to everyone as they moved across the deck taking turns to see me.  
Later that night Elder Maxson laid in his bed and thought about me. He listened to the music he had been secretly requesting me to bring to him through Teagan, and he confessed to himself what some had suspected all along. He ran his hands down his chest and then folded them behind his head examining the ceiling.  
"'I'm in love with her. I want to touch her, and I want her to love me back. I hope she feels that same way about me. I love dreaming about her, and all I can think about is the way she looks and what she talks about. Oh my god I'm lost to my feelings for her, but I will show her how I feel, I promise myself to do at least that much."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hoped you enjoyed this for now it's time to wrap it up in the next chapter!


	9. A little tear in the heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lorane and Maxson have grown so close to each other. Does she have the courage to take that next step with him or will science get in the way?

A week went by, and the pain from the injuries had finally stopped enough I didn't need anything for it anymore. I felt like myself for the first time since the accident, and I was happy to be able to have a nice time tonight. I made sure the Veronica found my holotape and gave it to Teagan. That was important to me, and I wanted to talk with Nora when I got the chance. As I thought about this, she slowly made her way over to me as I sat in the mess hall.  
"Hello, Lorane," She said softly as I sat down at the counter for a bit.  
"Nora," I said into my drink. I got up, and I hugged her smiling.  
"Oh, Lorane! I'm so glad you're okay! I locked up your lab and boarded over the windows that got broken out by the blast. I wanted to make sure you were okay, and I miss you being around the neighborhood. I can't wait for all us girls to hangout again."  
"We will very soon Nora. I hope you can be here at the party tonight, you know it wouldn't be the same without you here."  
"I will be here for sure! I want to get a nice dress on, and Danse said he was going on wear a suit! Oh, it'll be like old times up here, we're all calling it a Dapper Party Night! I'll see you in a couple of hours! Bye!" We hugged goodbye, and she quickly ran back down the hall to get ready for later. Brandis came in with some of the other Brotherhood Knights, and they all greeted me. I hugged Brandis as he put the player down on the table in the corner. We sat and played chess for a while talking like we always did. Cade came in and challenged Brandis to a game as I played the music, and Danse came over to me as I leaned against the wall watching them play with much amusement.   
"Lorane." I hugged him as he smiled at me looking so happy tonight in his nice black suit.  
"Danse. Where's Nora, isn't that woman ready yet?"  
"Oh, she'll be here in a minute. She wanted to wear a dress for the party and fix her hair nice."  
I smiled and shook my head.  
"She's the crazy one you know. Not me. I don't know how you can stand that, but it's not my business. How are you?"  
"I'm great. I was wondering how things were between you and Arthur."  
His eyes were searching me for something interesting.  
"Everything is so good between us. He makes me feel complete, and I couldn't be happier with him. I like him a lot, and I don't know how to handle the situation, but I guess I will figure it out when it happens."  
"I have faith that you will. Thanks for being my friend and I'll see you again soon." He patted me on the back as he walked down the hallway towards the ladders and Nora fell into his arms. They looked at each other so lovingly that I also fell off the wall watching them dance slowly back down the hallway to the mess area. We all danced in the mess hall to the rock music I provided, laughing and enjoying life on the giant airship. I never thought I could get everybody to do the twist but oh boy did they love that! I saw Maxson walking towards me, and I met him down the hallway as the others all started singing "Woolly Bully" in the background. We smiled and laughed as they were having a blast over there and he motioned me into his quarters.  
"This damn terminal won't work right. Can you fix it for me?"  
"I would love to, let's take a look-see here," I said as I laid down on the desk and looked behind it. I pulled myself up further onto the desk, and I started to go over down the back of it when he grabbed my legs and pulled me back. I jerked my one leg and flipped over without kicking him. I was now sitting on the edge of the desk with my crotch squarely against his. He put his arms on my shoulders and looked into my eyes.  
"Oh, what a compromising position I see we have found ourselves in here." He snickered a little as I stood up into him and he now stood nearly up against me, but not touching me. The look in his eyes said it all; he wanted to touch me so bad, but he was fearful.   
"There's nothing wrong with that terminal is there?"  
"No." He smiled as he reached behind me and turned on the player I gave him.   
What played on that thing ripped at my heart strings with an incredible force from the great beyond. It was the holotape I meant to give Teagan the night of the accident, the one that had been requested by the mystery man, the one I entrusted Haylen to give to Teagan for me, and it was timed perfectly for this moment.  
The song was Unchained Melody by The Righteous Brothers.  
He was so close to me I felt his breath slowly fall on my skin and the warmth of his body radiated on me. He looked deep into my eyes and dropped his coat on the table behind him. He very slowly closed the gap between us and put his arm around me very gently. I could feel his body heat through our uniforms, and I closed my eyes taking in this new sensation. We started dancing slowly as he put his cheek against mine and I could feel myself start to go to pieces in his arms. We were both captivated by each other so much that this romantic epic we had created here in this room that it was worth every pain we experienced before this encounter. We watched each other's eyes as we danced slowly in his quarters and all of sudden all we could hear was the music we were playing and nothing else. This love was so close that we just held each other and rocked to the sound of it. He kissed me softly with those velvet lips of his and I felt apart right there. I couldn't hold it back anymore, and we kissed deeply as I felt both of our tears merge on our faces as we pressed together. The next song that played was his favorite, Roy Orbison's "I Drove All Night", and we laid on his bed making out softly and slowly.   
We were started to make deep emotionally charged love to each other. He slowly took off my uniform and then his, tossing them on the floor. I watched him as he slowly began sucking on my erect nipples from all the arousal he provided to me. I had never been touched my any man before, and he was so soft I didn't expect that he was everything I had dreamed about. I arched into him as he slowly licked little circles around them and suckled me gently. He melted me into him, and I tried not to cry out as he was doing it but it was so good. I loved the way his body felt against mine, naked and pure, as he laid on top of me grinding his hard cock into my crotch as we made out in our underwear. He made me so hot I was getting wet, and I felt something had never felt before. I was feeling this heat deep down inside my core as he kept making me feel more aroused with every pass of his tongue into my mouth. We were both deep into each other's emotions when he pulled his briefs off and rubbed his slick cock against my bare skin.   
I shivered as I felt his pre-cum leak out and drip down the inside of my leg. I sighed gently as he started sucking on my neck and I knew I was going to lose my virginity to this good-looking man that held me in his arms. He was transforming me into a woman, and I was making him a man.   
"Oh Lorane, how I have wanted to lay with you like this for so long. I'm glad that you are here with me now and I can prove me love to you."  
He slid himself down to my panties, and he slowly removed them in an erotic way. He slowly ran his soft hands up and down the inside of my thighs as he looked at my private parts.   
"You don't have to prove anything to me Arthur. I already know how you feel, I just had to make sure I was ready for you."   
He slowly leaned down and put his wet tongue against my hard clit as I jerked involuntarily. I was rolling my hips into his mouth as he traced his tongue around it in an elliptical motion and started licking my slit. I thrashed a little as he held me down and made me have my first orgasm. I grabbed his hair and screamed out as he pushed me into a secondary climax with that sweet mouth of his.   
I was panting so hard that when he stopped I laid limp in his bed, and he slid himself on top of me. He spread me legs out a little, and I felt him pulsing at my entrance. We started making out again, rough and hard against these desires as he advanced himself into me. I gave my innocence away as it hurt slightly at first but the pleasure that followed burned me with a new desire. I attempted to scream as he penetrated me but he sucked it away with a long deep sucking kiss on my mouth, and I rolled my entire body back as I felt him continue deep into my body. I could feel everything he was doing, and I was so sensitive to him every little movement made me feel like I was going to have another orgasm. It was something that I thought was never going to happen and especially with a man like him.   
He held me, squeezing me as he slid in and out of my body. I moaned softly to this pleasure he gave effortlessly, and I wrapped my arms around him as he started to do it deeper and harder. I came over and over as he pounded me into his bed. Then I felt him get harder than he had ever been and in this instant, I had an orgasm that lasted for minutes as he came deep inside of me. It was so hot and wet that I held my breath, just feeling him as he released his seed into me. He moaned out loudly as his body spasmed into mine and I squeezed him harder.   
I closed my eyes and put one of my hands behind his head running my fingers through his hair. I was slowly coming down from this high he put me in, and I had another orgasm without warning. I clenched us both when it hit me and whispered out to him.  
"Arthur."   
We laid there and held each other for an hour or so after and we didn't uncouple from each other. There was no way for us to sleep after what we just did to each other and so we started to make out again. I felt him get hard, and it was only natural to start having sex. He did it so slowly as if he was massaging my inner walls with his hard erect cock. The sweet sensations of him made me feel like I was invincible in his arms. He lasted so long this time that when he did come again, we came together in harmony and cried out each other's names like a sweet lullaby. No more tears, no more emotional pain for us, we had finally found each other. The two lost souls that roamed the earth in search of each other for many lifetimes and here we were finally, where we belonged, in each other's arms drenched in love. We had become one flesh in the night, two virgins making the ultimate journey together at long last and now we made each other into a man and a woman.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope that you enjoyed reading this work! I know it's not the best but I'm still going through 'growing pains' as it would be and this is an attempt to show I'm making headway. If you liked this story be sure to check out my other stuff and let me know how you liked it. Thanks everyone for taking the time to stop by and have a great day!


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